it's like an island cut off from everywhere accessible only by helicopter. two hundred kilometers off the coast of nigeria a floating factory that is unique in the world as big as eight football pitches it's a foretaste of what the search for oil will become. this enormous trough is itself at the heart of a wide a system that consists of searching for oil ever deeper under the sea and also further and further from the explosive situation that prevails on land. submarines platforms and drilling vessels on a map a tiny rectangle named act. of a few kilometer square that represents a new eldorado. in the center floating like a queen bee a bellyful of a treasure that the whole world covets is the flagship of the company. i don't have your ideas.

on akpo we are far from everywhere but everything is checked. and you check all the facts. all the bags. even the people you know been working with for years you have to search their backs even those including the head of the station. and what are you searching for. anything that's about. drugs guns knives. and the. situation on the gulf of guinea and the most populous country in africa nigeria is

roughly the size of france and belgium combined. it's the size of the country the niger delta region that's the object of envy. a geological insult that is overflowing with excellent quality oil. thousands of drillings licensed to the oil companies of the whole world pierce the country's ground on land and at sea link together by pipelines that run through the mangroves in the sea in every direction . today is the largest oil producing country in africa the scene of a banquet between companies. after arriving by helicopter and after the regulation search patrick one of the two managers takes over from his colleague john francois his back to back in offshore speak. an engineer turned manager of a nigerian father and a maltese mother. is one of the rare employees of the company to hold such a post. but you. produce one hundred sixty three thousand barrels

a day for next month will where we're dealing here with large volumes of condensate which is very very flammable has more flammable. oil and also with lots of gas a type pressure. it's a kind of a system so we kind of weeks before we have meet the sparkle sourceforge mission the next thing would be with our fire and they need to put a risk yes everyone has to be worried about fire because a fire on board could would be disastrous it could be to sisters. so we have to be careful here permanently on the alert suits you best because the opposition trying to scrape initial cost more than three hundred meters loman didn't but this was where over story started. the name

yes it was a floating. storage. units woods everything because it's a unit that floats and it has capacity for production and storage. a process we don't stop but we see it and. first ask a tour of the property patrick shows us around his pipe or cathedral so what's currently. the holodeck level so big. time. so one of the problems that we have one of the. corrosion of the. corrosion at this level is. it would be difficult to repay just on the needs we have. so it would be rather impossible to cops out. because of the risk of exposure.

it's just this. was more than enough means. for the first time we've been allowed access to this incredibly technological and highly risky structure. on board two hundred forty men. completely lost in the pipes but you almost never meet anyone the f.p.s. . through which the precious liquid. dozens of pipes reaching down to the bottom of the sea which suck up the oil. you could say that workers here are like the distant extras in a giant mcconnel construction protected by the navy surveillance from countless cameras. a technological exploit certainly but in a context of political paranoia. to

nigerian navy patrol boats twenty four hours a day under the orders of antonio. he moved into security after twenty two years in the twenty two years of happiness as he describes it he's a man who searches the. patrols and supervises all movements around the base. and. so here we have the. operation. of the whole of the arc. with this. did come into it which allows us to take all the boats arriving. can but too early to know what boat is the right thing to do and especially to pick up any

suspect record that wasn't expected to enter the field with the cable these cameras monitor all the accesses here. and inside the. city will come to me to secure but that's a lot of security measures for extracting oil it's not. just on this on this is where the measures required to nigeria considering the threats that exists is a nigerian high risk the bordering the mehdi militia sometimes. and espionage and boats intruding in the maritime exclusion zone. as in this case all night. are you armed here on board since it was on i'm not on. if i don't there are no weapons on board even you don't have no making your ruler should have some guys climb up the chain and they have weapons machine guns for example what do you do but i don't see the other measures that would be taken measures that have been

designed for that situation. there are no guns on board and the situation is under control i repeat the situation is under control. i mean ari is a small fishing village situated on the island of bonny right at the mouth of the niger delta. and it's here that the gas sent from the f.p.s. so platform arrives by an undersea pipeline. if it weren't for the plant ameri arre would be a typical little village. with huts and shacks with palm leaf roofs streets of san music coming from portable radios open air stores kids running everywhere and a soccer match underway and the fisherman returning with the tide.

would be well if next door right next door protected by barbed wire they went sending millions of cubic meters of gas and oil to the most highly developed countries in the world. every day by did loading gust to order forty called new york dollar note they were not out there the community nearby you know about it i mean anybody from the company from. this you. know. when you come up with these guys know that all looks that. twenty four was a very deep study lou did not is top one this. in the small harbor when the ships come in the giants with gas the tiny ones with fish to world's rope shoulders i did looks as if the big world is giving the tiny one the thing i. wanted to do what it was to get a little we took off on

a boat metal shop. and . sometimes sometimes. nigerian people work for the companies yes yes there was a little boy with us he brought us all. about that at the white men he says but it's very odd you. will help out some of us but that's awful i did a lot to bring blood from us and all of us but the dog. and the supreme insult naturally there's no gas in the village to smoke the fish and cooking think of the wood from the forest. of the terminal on the chimneys that

burn off the gas nonstop to prevent overpressure they tell us. that's a lot of use to the villages overpressure. don't. use religion. economy to it i do some of the fish imports. they were drinking does or was that because of the devices in doing they are bored says in as because i didn't. know what i should do anything with. that i says and i discuss it in the i think intuitively that why what i wanted not about the internet by the review was done by the thank you what though. offshore from the village the f.p.s. engineers and technicians continue extract oil far from land because that's the job at the heart of the story machine the end of a pipe and in

a small jar the famous brown liquid. the world's holy grail you might say. so this is the oil. being treated it's a condensate it's a very light crude it is it. i mean more than two thousand meters down. and we can get something out that's relatively easy but it comes out of the tap it's what they call the blob of nigeria. for this quality you have to go deeper and deeper to find it today overshoot or major projects a situation a very great debt. so it's going to require immense technology. more and more technological evolution to go and get the oil even deeper.

of course other aspects of very important for the commercialization of this oil. you must see a mixture of water and oil because water doesn't cost much an oil costs a lot. every time we load our oil product onto a tanker we have to be sure it contains a minimum of water. i say the blood of nigeria because it's their role material it's their problem we have here to help them exploited and for me. it's this is the fruit of their history we spoke of their history because. it's because of the millions of years of history. we have.

and i hope it will allow them to fuel their economy just. in an efficient whiteman but despite that there are a few problems. from your point of view can you understand that there are people who might want to attack you. maybe maybe. just. i'm just asking the question you don't have to answer that i know my answer is yes personally that doesn't surprise me. but doesn't surprise me. so. back on land we allude military surveillance to film something that's totally forbidden to film on pain or rest in major problems yeah. yeah. you know. the protest movement to denounce the environmental damage caused by the all companies wants to show us something that we move. if

we will move. from closed so this is not been done in saying that they're fifty it's. the end of a pipeline most in the wild an enormous blaze the stench of gases insupportable five hundred meters it's already unbearable i was thinking it was forbidden for guys like that yes that i was there probably. got them that's why. i'm not on that drug i'm. not going to put it to go with that but i thought it was you know the feds. the last of. it is it's like a monster. smells stinks and this sound. like this is the most. this is well done the most. that's. right now.

this is. all. there. everywhere. right about the place. it's. just. this is. becoming like oh my. god. experts say that the gas burned off in nigeria by itself be sufficient to satisfy the energy needs of the whole continent of africa billions of cubic meters that we saw in the bowels of the earth go up in smoke day. famous overpressure in the point . in reality the companies make so much money from the oil that they don't even care about the gas they pump at the same time. these massive panels also create

acid rain so that the water in the sky is no longer drinkable. garrison in charge of site surveillance court will have a visit we spend several hours negotiating bargaining explaining ourselves to the higher ups over the telephone. solicitors reputation and his work with amnesty international in particular allow us to get out of trouble. a form of farm work and send a stint as a leader of most of the movement for the survival of the ogoni people it's found the right to consider we. denounced both the dictatorship and power in the eighty's and the. by shell the largest of the old companies present. in a sham trial in which he was accused of murder despite the partial stations and anger of the whole world he was condemned to death. along with eight other members

of the movement. which companies are selling. several minutes. i want to. know is this something. companies are the ones as possible. because. this is a. permanently escorted synesthete has no car no address and no children anyone who production in nigeria is under threat of death. the village of the creek is even crossed by a highway of pipes that don't even carry.

teach. the fourth official and. so. on here feel the. spirit.

to do or not to decide for good will of this area. there was a day we were called forms that we saw. everybody we don't know show came to. all of this advice your histories are dead on the trees are dead. on here we used to fish when we were fishing no fish. is condemned for ever when they speak i shall discover that he's been very. large do we see it is so with us because they are always afraid to you for damages and composition.

we mustn't lump everyone together not all the companies behave or have behaved as badly a shell in nigeria. it's just the worst one amongst them. offshore total allows us to go from installation to installation. jack ryan is a motion to special position by satellite with its derrick and its pipes it conforms to the stereotypical image we have of oil drilling. beneath the boat three thousand meters of water and therefore pockets are a further two thousand meters below the sea bed. and apocalyptic. conditions a few months back a crane drag three men into the sea one. of the nigerians on board the wages are unique and

a good living in oil whether you're black. so big. it's a big country. i don't know but. on the floor below we can clearly see a pipe plunging into a pool on the ship. this is the umbilical cord fixed to the seabed. inside they slide the rods that were drilled down to the deposit.

and the oil is reached. they install a sort of giant fowls several stories high over the drilling has been done it and the engineers have a very pretty nickname for it. but. i don't know the point here we are in front of the christmas tree is that when you cool it a christmas tree which you know the christmas tree did so well had and ridges and drop that was based on you since you have all response to. my. face. it was a. christmas tree the big day to fight for. this . was the price i feel like since something going on we will be put to. good to do this.

twenty feet first must be. there it was done. by. some day so. you have the money back when you bet. your. three years on he's. not. with those those give you. a short sell if dean is continuing his crusade and he takes us to an incredible swallowed up by the underground. the fed far away. i would read in bed at the. door where. i wear number one. right there fifty six. if you. fessler went out with them.

and in that bed. i'm not so bad about. us but as i speak doesn't like my place you know going to not. have been of course. you can see. he's just like you can see ya bone don't he's going to look like one or finishes will go. on. a money you know aussie finishes the abundant economy it's. not right.

well with the. money it's technology innovation all the latest developments from around russia we've got the future covered.

arab league officials say their observer mission in syria will be extended for an extra month criticism from the syrian opposition which wants to see. croatia is voting on whether the country should join the e.u. the. protests and violent clashes. continue to be shaken by the austerity rally with people. rising up against their government. and you know the story this week tensions around nuclear program stirred further by . iranian oil and the us building up its warship presence.

on the internet in action a massive online backlash over u.s. plans to expand the web censorship at least to the suspension. of the top stories of today this week you're watching the weekly with me. this news just coming in now are a big officials have decided that will continue to work inside syria for another month the group also intends to increase the number of observers and receive training by the u.n. the mission expires this week but violence is still flaring up and parts of the country one of the.